I think his point is that artists do put some thought into the order of songs on the albums they release.
Obviously, but I'll be damned if i'm going to sit around trying to guess what exactly some twat's point is because he can't be arsed to string together a coherent statement.
Some more than others, of course. I doubt "The Queen Is Dead" is sequenced as carefully as "Dark Side Of The Moon" (though who knows, I've never listened to The Smiths stoned). But I do hear a plan to the tracks on The Smiths' albums. Could they be played in a different order? Sure, but why not go with the order chosen by the artists?
I have to disagree with you there: sequencing an album is an (increasingly obsolete) art form.
Any idiot from a label can throw together some tracks and call it an album, but a great band knows its strengths, understands its narrative, and can fashion a statement. I dislike compilation albums for this reason: a random collection of songs is somewhat soulless, but a proper album captures a place and a time, and is a statement of intent.
Of course this goes for some bands more than others: the latest Killing Joke album would be a stylistic mess if it weren't for the sequencing, which is perfect. The last Arcade Fire album is also beautifully sequenced (all their albums are). Shuffle the tracks on either one, and the narrative is lost.
Kaz, I've always found those bothersome track inclusion/exclusion decisions made by record execs very frustrating, and back in the day I went out of my way to find original releases. In the case of The Smiths and Meat is Murder, though, I wouldn't fret about it - that's just the way it goes, and with The Smiths it's all good.
You both misunderstand my point, which almost certainly means I failed to make it clear. I am not arguing that sequencing doesn't matter, or that it is purely random, or that it can't be an artistic tool. Obviously that is the case.
My point is twofold. One, even though sequencing is intentional that does not mean that any given specific sequencing is
the way, the only natural way, to order a given set of material. Secondly, most of it is in the act of listening. Once you have absorbed an album in a given sequence over a long period, it seems unthinkable that it could be otherwise. If Pink Floyd had exchanged one of the tracks on DSOTM with a different track and arranged the tracks in a different sequence (one with a thought behind it) when the album was originally released, would it have seemed wrong somehow today? Of course it wouldn't.
Well I wonder is the only song that can possibly follow
Nowhere Fast, overwhelmingly because that's what it does.
Or take the album that started this discussion, The Smiths. There's a huge number of songs who could easily have been on that album. If
These things Take time and
Handsome Devil had been picked for inclusion over
You've got Everything Now and
I don't owe you anything, would that have made the album seem unnaturally composed? You can say there are reasons why some songs were chosen and some weren't, but ultimately, 25 years down the road, do those reasons really amount to much significance for the listening experience?
Personally I have no doubt that there are at least 20 different ways in which DSOTM could have been sequenced that would every one of them have turned into the only imaginable sequence after 30 years of listening.
Which does not matter at all to the fact that sequencing matters. It matters big time. It is full of meaning. But the meaning is generated overwhelmingly by our repeated listening to the music in a given sequence, and only marginally by any artistic effect inherent in a given sequencing. Which is important relative to the original question because it means that if you've listened to The Smiths with TCM for 20 years, then that is neccessarily the correct sequence. As I wrote, and meant literally, it doesn't even matter if he agrees - he is never going to be able to change his perception, whether he wants to or not.
cheers
